WotC Backs Down: Original OGL To Be Left Untouched; Whole 5E Rules Released as Creative Commons

Hundreds of game publishers sigh in relief as, after extensive pressure exerted by the entire open gaming community, WotC has agreed to leave the original Open Gaming License untouched and put the whole of the 5E rules into Creative Commons.

So, what's happened?

• The Open Gaming Licence v1.0a which most of the D&D third party industry relies on, will be left untouched for now.
• The whole of the D&D 5E SRD (ie the rules of the game less the fluff text) has been released under a Creative Commons license.

OGL 1.0a & Creative Commons

Over the past few weeks you, the community, have made your voices heard. And we’ve listened. OGL 1.0a will remain untouched AND the entire SRD 5.1...

www.dndbeyond.com

WotC has a history of 'disappearing' inconvenient FAQs and stuff, such as those where they themselves state that the OGL is irrevocable, so I'll copy this here for posterity.

When you give us playtest feedback, we take it seriously.

Already more than 15,000 of you have filled out the survey. Here's what you said:

• 88% do not want to publish TTRPG content under OGL 1.2.
• 90% would have to change some aspect of their business to accommodate OGL 1.2.
• 89% are dissatisfied with deauthorizing OGL 1.0a.
• 86% are dissatisfied with the draft VTT policy.
• 62% are satisfied with including Systems Reference Document (SRD) content in Creative Commons, and the majority of those who were dissatisfied asked for more SRD content in Creative Commons.

These live survey results are clear. You want OGL 1.0a. You want irrevocability. You like Creative Commons.
The feedback is in such high volume and its direction is so plain that we're acting now.

1. We are leaving OGL 1.0a in place, as is. Untouched.
2. We are also making the entire SRD 5.1 available under a Creative Commons license.
3. You choose which you prefer to use.

This Creative Commons license makes the content freely available for any use. We don't control that license and cannot alter or revoke it. It's open and irrevocable in a way that doesn't require you to take our word for it. And its openness means there's no need for a VTT policy. Placing the SRD under a Creative Commons license is a one-way door. There's no going back.

Our goal here is to deliver on what you wanted.

So, what about the goals that drove us when we started this process?

We wanted to protect the D&D play experience into the future. We still want to do that with your help. We're grateful that this community is passionate and active because we'll need your help protecting the game's inclusive and welcoming nature.

We wanted to limit the OGL to TTRPGs. With this new approach, we are setting that aside and counting on your choices to define the future of play.
Here's a PDF of SRD 5.1 with the Creative Commons license. By simply publishing it, we place it under an irrevocable Creative Commons license. We'll get it hosted in a more convenient place next week. It was important that we take this step now, so there's no question.

• SRD 5.1-CC

We'll be closing the OGL 1.2 survey now.

We'll keep talking with you about how we can better support our players and creators. Thanks as always for continuing to share your thoughts.

Kyle Brink
Executive Producer, Dungeons & Dragons

What does this mean?

The original OGL sounds safe for now, but WotC has not admitted that they cannot revoke it. That's less of an issue now the 5E System Reference Document is now released to Creative Commons (although those using the 3E SRD or any third party SRDs still have issues as WotC still hasn't revoked the incorrect claim that they can revoke access to those at-will).

At this point, if WotC wants anybody to use whatever their new OGL v1.x turns out to be, there needs to be one heck of a carrot. What that might be remains to be seen.

Pathfinder publlsher Paizo has also commented on the latest developments.

We welcome today’s news from Wizards of the Coast regarding their intention not to de-authorize OGL 1.0a. We still believe there is a powerful need for an irrevocable, perpetual independent system-neutral open license that will serve the tabletop community via nonprofit stewardship. Work on the ORC license will continue, with an expected first draft to release for comment to participating publishers in February.

Over 1,500 Publishers Support Paizo's Upcoming Open RPG Creator's License

Paizo has revealed some of the 1,500+ tabletop RPG publishers who have expressed an interest in their new Open RPG Creator's License (ORC), describing the group as the 'ORC Alliance'. The license itself is still being worked on, so these 1,500 publishers have not actually seen it or signed...

www.enworld.org

 

[Ashtagon]

Except, that foundation can't be removed anymore. ...

It totally can. In order to use CC material, you have to credit it as CC material by using that licence in your book. All the old books use OGL licencing. So all the old material will need to be re-written to be safe.

There's a replacement for the OGL 1.0a foundation stone that everyone currently uses, but actually replacing that foundation stone in each and every product is a non-trivial task. In contrast, adding three words to the OGL 1.0a (to make an OGL 1.0b) would be a trivial task.

The necessary OGL changes (I'm sure an actual lawyer can translate this to proper legalese) are:

1 - change "any authorised version" to "any version ever authorised".

2 - change "perpetual" to "perpetual and irrevocable".

Making this 1.0b OGL would change the future-proofing task from one of reading through each book line by line to ensure it is valid under the CC and 5.1 SRD (remember, a lot of legacy content was based on the 3.0/3.5/d20m SRDs, which are similar but not fully overlapping), editing as needed, to swapping a single page (the one containing the OGL).

As a trivial example, if you used the exact wording from the 3.5 SRD for something in your product, but the wording for the equivalent item in the 5.1 SRD is different (quite likely, its a different rules set after all), you'd be in breach of copyright if you then dropped the OGL in favour of CC without also rewording your body text. And you'd be vulnerable to a new legal challenge by WotC if you don't drop the OGL 1.0a while no OGL 1.0b is available.

 

[Michael Linke]

You can publish 1D&D material right now with the 5.1 SRD, assuming they (WotC) are continuing with the previous plans for 1D&D. Some speculate they will change plans now that they lost this battle. I, however, think these were two separate and mostly unrelated ideas.

Remember, people published 5e supplements before there was a 5e SRD.

The races in the SRD don’t match the races even in the most recent errata, let alone what might be in One D&D. For many products the difference won’t matter, I guess.

 

[Reynard]

At the risk of this getting lost in a fast moving thread: how does CC interact with "open content"?

That is, in a book like, say, Tome of Beasts published under 1.0a, there was open content (stat blocks) and closed content (descriptions, other stuff). But if I understand it, you can't publish a book partially under CC. So would Kobold in this scenario have to publish a separate ToB SRD under CC if they wanted to use CC like they did OGL 1.0a?

Because so far, WotC hasn't solved to OGL problem. They have only pulled back from deauthorization, not modified 1.0a to ensure it is safe going forward. After sleeping on it, it doesn't actually seem like WotC gave in as much as it initially felt.

 

[Yaarel]

They don’t have time between now & next spring to develop that deeply. The OneD&D playtest is a near complete game, MotM is largely how we expect monsters to look, the DMG requires few changes, it’s class design they were focused on and that would need to be done by fall to get to the printer and back here for release in the spring as intended. If they intend to continue the open playtest, that’s not a lot of time at all which means most of the work is already done.

Yeah, I suspect we already have a sense of what the basic mechanics will look like for the 2024 edition.

Most of it is minor rearrangement of the furniture, in order to feature the most popular mechanical aspects of 5e, and to comb out any problem areas in setting content.

Except for the free half-feat at level 1, which is minor, 6e will remain compatible with 5e balancewise.

 

[Michael Linke]

Yes, I am seeing on social media folks who want to give WoTC a chance and folks who say "too little, too late" going at it...

“too little too late” is an absurd thing for them to say.

1) this is more open than the 1.0a status quo. Don’t see how that’s “too little”
2) they never actually changed anything about the OGL yet. The proposed changes never went into affect. Don’t see how it’s “too late”.

 

[pemerton]

The necessary OGL changes (I'm sure an actual lawyer can translate this to proper legalese) are:

1 - change "any authorised version" to "any version ever authorised".

2 - change "perpetual" to "perpetual and irrevocable".

The better legal view, I think, is that these changes to the text of the OGL would not actually change its legal operation. Or in other words, if you'd be comfortable with an OGL with the words you suggest, it's not clear to me why you shouldn't be comfortable with the current one.

Or to put it a slightly different way: if the real worry is WotC throwing its weight around, changing the text of the OGL in the way you suggest doesn't seem like it will stop that happening.

 

[Jd Smith1]

So Plan A has been cancelled.

I wonder what Plan B is?

 

[Ashtagon]

The better legal view, I think, is that these changes to the text of the OGL would not actually change its legal operation. Or in other words, if you'd be comfortable with an OGL with the words you suggest, it's not clear to me why you shouldn't be comfortable with the current one.

Or to put it a slightly different way: if the real worry is WotC throwing its weight around, changing the text of the OGL in the way you suggest doesn't seem like it will stop that happening.

It certainly shouldn't change the legal operation. However, what the last month has shown is that WotC's understanding of what that document says and the 3PP community's understanding of what it said differed in quite significant ways on those two items. Rewording to remove the ambiguity on the points where assumptions differed seems sensible.

Now sure, WotC may well throw its weight around again in the future. It's a big corporation (or at least, a branch of a big corporation), so that's almost a given. But this rewording will at least ensure it doesn't throw its weight against this specific legal point, which, as we know, hasn't actually been legally resolved either way, despite the strong community pushback.

I have no doubt there will at some point be another attack on the OGL. But that's no reason not to reinforce it on a point where it is known to be vulnerable to attack.

 

[Michael Linke]

At the risk of this getting lost in a fast moving thread: how does CC interact with "open content"?

That is, in a book like, say, Tome of Beasts published under 1.0a, there was open content (stat blocks) and closed content (descriptions, other stuff). But if I understand it, you can't publish a book partially under CC. So would Kobold in this scenario have to publish a separate ToB SRD under CC if they wanted to use CC like they did OGL 1.0a?

Because so far, WotC hasn't solved to OGL problem. They have only pulled back from deauthorization, not modified 1.0a to ensure it is safe going forward. After sleeping on it, it doesn't actually seem like WotC gave in as much as it initially felt.

It’s released under CC-BY. You can use it, as long as you “attribute” the CC work, eg say where you got it from. You DO NOT need to release your own work under the CC or include a CC license. That would be CC-BY-SA, “share alike”.

The required attribution text is on the first page of the SRD.

CC experts correct me if I’m wrong.

 

[Reynard]

It’s released under CC-BY. You can use it, as long as you “attribute” the CC work, eg say where you got it from. You DO NOT need to release your own work under the CC or include a CC license. That would be CC-BY-SA, “share alike”.

The required attribution text is on the first page of the SRD.

CC experts correct me if I’m wrong.

Maybe I wasn't clear. Under OGL 1.0a you can designate portions of the work as open or closed content so other people can use it (ToB monsters in an adventure, for example). If I understand it correctly, you can't release a book under CC and reserve a portion of it from being CC. So it is a fundamentally different model and not as friendly to the concept of Open Gaming.